Nitrous Oxide
by lizteroid
Summary: College days, Maura meets someone new who makes her feel like she's never felt before, with a few laughs added in here and there. Rated T for now, may be subject to change.


_Author's Note: _Another Maura/Ian (Maurian) fic, a oneshot, my muse quillsofblood has given me this idea.

**Disclaimer: **I do not own any rights to any of the characters or the show, those belong to TNT, Janet Tamaro and Tess Gerritsen.

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><p>At college, Maura Isles had been one of those girls who enjoyed being alone with her books and her chemistry sets, and her notes. Maura had not really been interested in boys until she got to college, and all of that changed, during her second year. She had never really fitted in with the type of girls who went to college, who were part of her sorority. Those kinds of girls were the ones who got the guys and didn't need to work a day in their lives. But, not Maura.<p>

Of course, that was all before Ian Faulkner happened to come along and whip her off her feet. And, Maura allowed him to.

When she met Ian for the first time, she had been in her Micro-Biochemistry class. Looking across the room, Ian had saw Maura first, she was a flurry of fashionable clothing, obviously expensive. She looked expensive, probably even without the clothes and the shoes. Oh God, the shoes...

Looking down to her shoes, obviously not so practical for a day in the lab, Ian raised his brow and admired them. He admired the curvature of her ankle, the sweeping of her calves...

"Hi, I'm Maura." she smiled softly as she realised he was staring over at her, and she had moved to him, standing at his side with her head tilted as she tried to read him. She saw Ian quickly broke from his trance and looked to Maura before she continued, "I noticed you didn't seem to be concentrating on your project." she smiled to him softly.

Heaven. She was a little bit of Heaven.

"Uhh...how could I?" Ian frowned and turned back to the project he had been working on before she had caught his attention and drawn his focus away from the pipettes he was working with.

Looking to him, and frowning herself, Maura gently questioned, "Excuse me?"

"I mean..." he turned back to look at her, "How could I concentrate on this while there's you hanging around?" he glanced over her, smirking slightly. When Ian saw she was having trouble processing his comment, he chuckled a little and assured her, "Meaning, you're just too hot, can't you pull it in a little...?" he smirked a little more as he watched Maura struggling to understand him.

"I apologize, I'm having some trouble understanding what you are insinuating here." Maura responded to Ian's comments.

"I'm Ian." he told her, finally introducing himself as he held out his gloved hand after setting down the Ginsberg's he'd been holding, "I'm just playing with you." he smiled gently to her, "I do that a lot with hot women."

Maura blushed then and she swallowed, briefly looking down before she looked back to Ian, smiling softly. She looked up at Ian and nodded, taking his hand to make his acquaintence before she then re-introduced herself, "Maura." she told him.

As she looked over Ian, Maura felt herself particularly drawn to him. He had been the first to flirt with her properly, to not treat her like an idiot or a bimbo just for her beauty. From the body language she had already analysed, Maura discovered that Ian was someone she could trust to stick around and treat her properly. She watched him, as he looked at her, taking in her appearance before she smiled to him gently.

"You've been to Paris recently?" Ian asked.

"I attended school there. A Boarding school, from the age of seven." Maura nodded, "I developed a strong sense of fashion and culture being in that city." she looked down, feeling bittersweet as she remembered those days. Around those girls. The ones who had everything and still were not happy, they were like her.

"And, you didn't like it?"

"I did, I loved it there, it's just I didn't really get to see my parents, even during the holidays." she frowned slightly, "They used to travel around Europe a lot." she nodded then. Maura then decided on making a very bold move, "Would you like to get...coffee?" she asked Ian softly before biting her lip and wishing she could retrieve the request back from the air.

"I was just about to ask the same thing. You women really are into the whole women's equality thing, huh?" he chuckled to her gently and nodded, smiling to her, "I'd love to, Maura."

She smiled and nodded to Ian, staring to him for just one moment too long for newly acquainted friends, but he didn't seem to mind as she rounded the bench and headed back to her own project, realizing now that the rest of the class had since packed up and just the remaining few were tidying away their things before strolling out of the lab, leaving the two staring at each other. For Maura, she'd felt instant attraction to this man, this...New Zealander, a Kiwi she'd heard them named before. To her, Ian was the right choice, and nobody was going to ruin it for her. They would get coffee and they would talk, get to know one another, work together at some point in the future.

And there she was, mentally selecting wedding china.

"I'll see you later then?" Ian smiled to her gently, giving her a gentle nudge as he noticed she had digressed into a trance-like state, just looking at him before she looked to her satchel and grabbed it up from the bench, taking out a pipette in the process, "Woah, I got it..." he smiled gently and bent down at the same time Maura did. They butted heads.

Literally.

"Ouch!" Maura quickly exclaimed, placing her hand over the place which Ian's head had made rather swift contact with her own.

"Oh, hey! Sorry...let me..." he smiled to her, gently using his fingers to scoop up the shattered, once delicate pipette before wrapping it in paper towelling and tossing it into the waste bin. Ian smiled to Maura again as he turned back to face her, brighter this time until he noticed she was still holding her head, "Hey, you wanna go get some ice for that? Maybe steal some sugar cookies?" he raised a brow to her, "I haven't eaten since breakfast..." he explained.

"I guess we should head right on over there then...Oh! You're bleeding, Ian." she noticed, looking to his fingers. It must have been when he'd picked up the broken glass shards from the smashed pipette that they had sliced his fingertips. Looking to him, Maura grabbed the hand with the least amount of blood before she dragged him out of the room, "Come on! I'm well acquainted with the duty nurse. She'll fix you up."


End file.
